No Rest for the Brave (2004)

Some things I liked some I did not.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

I'm looking forward to Stranger by the Lake. Saw the preview, looks like Guiraudie learned something in the last 10 years. Focus, focus! Doesn't matter what you focus on so much. Just focus. Lots of propositions in this movie. Some of them are sexy. Some (not many) of them are funny. Some are yummy - the Golden Hour seemed to show up a lot, and the lighting in general was pretty cool. But to talk about Magical Realism or Surrealism in terms of this film seems to overstate the case. It's more like an active but unruly imagination in love with cinema, and all of its coolest moments - can we make the frogs rain down like they did in Magnolia?He thinks he's making Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, but he's really making The President's Analyst.

It seems that Jean-Luc Godard still has a lot to answer for. Some 60 years after his Brainless got the Pseuds into such a lather young filmmakers are still finding that off-the-wall, outre, call it what you will remains as good a substitute for talent for them as it did for him. This time around one Alain Guiraudie has come up with a scenario in which a guy named Basile - or it COULD be Hector - gets it into his head that if he falls asleep he will never wake up and - I'm guessing here and your guess is as good as mine - in the throes of sleep deprivation appears to undergo the type of hallucinations he could just as easily acquire via substance abuse. Whether he did actually massacre an entire small village, have an affair with a 60 year-old man, fly a red plane abortively, etc is really academic because like Godard before him Guiraudie has either not learned or has chosen to deliberately ignore Rule #1. Entertain the audience. Academics will cream in their pants over this one because it's open to so many interpretations it'll keep them writing papers and lecturing for years. On the other hand the non-academic film-goer will take one look and say merde.

One of the hardest things for humans to do is to explain a dream and make it interesting. Herein lies the biggest problem of "No Rest for the Brave." Rare is the viewer who will make it to the end of this oddly beautiful but frustrating film. First, for the non-native French speaker, this is a film heavy on the dialog – lots of it and it comes at you machine gun fast which translates into being forced to read constantly and as fast as you can.In a nutshell "No Rest" tells the story of a boy – Basille (also with an alter-ego called Hector) a 16 year old who believes he's approaching the penultimate sleep – one more night with his eyes closed and he will die. So, sleep deprived, he is forever in a state of semi-consciousness living more in a dream state than the real world. It becomes increasingly difficult (if not downright impossible) to figure out what is real and what isn't. Does Basille really kill an entire village? Is he having an affair with a 60 year old man? Does he really drive around in an airplane he can't get off the ground? What is the significance of "little red balls?" Is there really an improper "season" for eating foie gras? If one allows themselves to fall into this world, the difference between reality and dreaming ultimately doesn't matter.Director Alain Guiraudie creates a beautiful, surreal existential plane wherein the Bassile and those who populate his life (and dreams) reside. There are images that are breathtakingly beautiful – such as Basille's red plane's attempted take off, or the image of him wildly, violently dancing 70's punk style to an acoustic guitar song in a brightly lit pool hall.I thought I would gouge my eyes out after 20 minutes or so, but once I "let go" and just watched it on its own terms and fell in love with this oddball, beautiful picture.

This movie is about a boy who thinks he will never wake up if he fall asleep again. And this makes him for some reason shoot down the population of a small village and then go on the run. Then the movie just doesn't makes any sense anymore and after a hour i walked out, realizing i didn't care at all how it ended. It wasn't worth it.Although the story seems interesting there was nothing in this movie that kept any standard. I could have stayed to the end if it had been beautiful shot or something similar, but no. A huge disappointment!